What!—do you say that you “would fortify every island on the coast, plant Martello towers on every flat beach, crown every height with cannon, and station iron-clads in every harbour and bay, so that the entire coast should bristle with artillery?” That sounds well, but what guarantee have we that you really would act thus if France were to become so outrageous?
“Common sense might assure me of it,” you reply.
So it might, and so it would, if we had not evidence to the contrary in the fact that our country is thus assailed month after month—year after year—by a more inveterate enemy than France ever was or will be, and yet how little is done to defend ourselves against his attacks, compared with what might be, with what ought to be, done!
This enemy is the storm; but, like France, he is not our natural enemy. We have only chosen in time past to allow him to become so. The storm has been wisely and beneficently ordained by God to purify the world’s atmosphere, and to convey health and happiness to every land under heaven. If we will not take the obvious and quite possible precautions that are requisite to secure ourselves from his violence, have we not ourselves to blame?
There are far too few harbours of refuge on our exposed coasts; the consequence is that our fishing-boats are caught by the storm and wrecked, and not unfrequently as many as a hundred lives are lost in a few hours: Who is to blame? A large vessel goes on the rocks because there is no lighthouse there to give warning of danger; a post has been neglected and the enemy has crept in: Who neglected that post? After the ship has got on the rocks, it is made known to the horrified passengers that there are no ship’s lifeboats aboard, neither are there any life-belts: Whose blame is that? Still there seems hope, for the shore is not far off, and anxious people line it; but no ordinary boat can live in such a sea. There is no rocket apparatus on this part of the coast; no mortar apparatus by which a line might be sent on board: Why not? The nearest lifeboat station is fifteen miles off: Whose fault is that? Is the storm our enemy here? Is not selfish, calculating, miserly man his own enemy in this case? So the ship goes to pieces, and the result is that the loss of this single vessel makes 60 widows and 150 fatherless children in one night! not to speak of thousands of pounds’ worth of property lost to the nation.
If you doubt this, reader, consult the pages of the Lifeboat Journal, in which you will find facts, related in a grave, succinct, unimpassioned way, that ought to make your hair stand on end!
Thoughts strongly resembling those recorded in the last few pages filled the mind and the heart of Bax, as he stood on that calm bright morning on the sea-shore. It was a somewhat lonely spot at the foot of tall cliffs, not far from which the shattered hull of a small brig lay jammed between two rocks. Tommy Bogey stood beside him, and both man and boy gazed long and silently at the wrack which lined the shore. Every nook, every crevice and creek at the foot of the cliff was filled choke full of broken planks and spars, all smashed up into pieces so small that, with the exception of the stump of a main-mast and the heel of a bowsprit, there was not a morsel that exceeded three feet in length, and all laid side by side in such regular order by the swashing of the sea in and out of the narrower creeks, that it seemed as if they had been piled there by the hand of man.
They gazed silently, because they had just come upon a sight which filled their hearts with sadness. Close beside a large rock lay the form of an old white-haired man with his head resting on a mass of sea-weed, as if he were asleep. Beside him lay a little girl, whose head rested on the old man’s breast, while her long golden hair lay in wild confusion over his face. The countenances of both were deadly pale, and their lips blue. It required no doctor’s skill to tell that both were dead.
“Ah’s me! Tommy, ’tis a sad sight,” said Bax.
Tommy made no reply for a few seconds, but after an ineffectual effort to command himself, he burst into tears.